Getting Started and Working with Building Information Modeling

This article will assume that one has heard of Building Information Modeling or BIM but has not developed a strategy as to how to get the most out of it. The National BIM Standard (NBIMS) has defined BIM as a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. As such, it serves as a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility, forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life cycle from inception onward. A basic premise of BIM is collaboration by different stakeholders at different phases of the life cycle of a facility to insert, extract, update, or modify information to support and reflect the roles of that stakeholder. The BIM is a shared digital representation founded on open standards for interoperability.